New films ask why suicide bombers kill
Reuters
Date: 11-03-05
By Arthur Spiegelman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Making "Paradise Now," a tale of why two laid-back garage mechanics become suicide bombers, was not easy for Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad -- he had to scramble for funds, dodge a missile attack from Israel plus skirt landmines and threats from extremists.
But the filming in Nablus, where his location manager was briefly kidnapped as a warning by factions afraid the film would be critical, was just one hurdle. He has to see if anyone is listening as he tries to explain a new fact of modern life.
The movie, now opening across the United States, takes its place with two other fictional films dramatizing the unanswered question of the post-9/11 world: What makes a person become a suicide bomber, ready to take his or her life and those of innocent strangers.
Is it the promise of paradise, virgins, an act of revenge, courage, despair or impotence?
Also playing currently is Joseph Castelo's made-on-a-shoestring "The War Within" about a cell of Pakistani terrorists planning to blow up Grand Central Station in New York as a follow up to 9/11. Castelo's film centers on the clash of values between East and West and has won respectful reviews.
Opening next month is "Syriana," a $50 million thriller starring George Clooney that tackles in part the same issue -- but mass-market style, made by Steven Gaghan who wrote "Traffic," the widely praised drug war film.
Neither "Paradise Now" nor "War Within" defends suicide bombers but instead each wants the viewer to understand the mind-set that produces such acts -- because, as Abu-Assad says, to understand is a first step forward.
One scene in his movie is set in a video store that might pass for one in the West except that it sells tapes made by suicide bombers who explain their actions to inspire those that follow. The tapes seem to take on the role that baseball trading cards might have in the West.
ALMIGHTY IMPOTENCE
Abu-Assad says he believes that impotence fuels the bombings. And his characters' words underlie that thought as they go through their daily lives in occupied territory that the film presents as an airless, hermetically sealed prison.
"Under the occupation, we're already dead .... In this life we are dead anyway .... If we can't live as equals, at least we can die as equals" are typical refrains in the film.
The filmmaker says, "The feeling of the impotence is so strong that they kill themselves and others to say, 'I am not impotent.' It is a very complex situation, but the overriding umbrella is the injustice situation."
The film, partly financed by Israel, is playing in Israel to strong reviews as it is in the West Bank. "In Israel, the reaction is the same. People judge it as a film -- is it believable .... There is no one Israeli, there are many Israelis who see playing politics as the biggest problem."
The Palestinian Authority has submitted the film as its entry named for best foreign film Oscar and it will be interesting to see if it becomes one of the five finalists. But Abu-Assad says he has complaints from in the government that the film was too Western.
He says his film doesn't impose a point of view but instead tries to show "something invisible and that has never been done before."
Los Angeles Times film writer Rachel Abramowitz calls the movie a "'Palestinian Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.' It focuses on two people on the periphery of history and watches them breathe."
And this Abu-Assad has done. Now he has to see if any one can hear the breathing.
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